Most morbid AH

alt_historian

drakkon said:
Some will call this sacrilege, but I like the film better than the book. The book was good, but not the Pulitzer-deserving masterpiece everyone was making it out to be.

As for "worse", I assume you mean more morbid than the film? I would say yes; note for example that the film left out the infamous Baby-roasting on a spit scene.
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Well... fair enough, then. I thought the journey into the basemement was bad.

Either way, they're still left with a nonexistent (as far as we know) ecosphere. That beetle they saw towards the end of the film? As far as I'm aware, beetles live pretty well off dead matter, i.e. all the trees.

Also, is it me, or was it made pretty clear (in the film) what had happened? That is, a nuclear war. Viggo Mortenson's character talks, in voiceover, about "a bright flash, the ground shook, and everything electrical went dead", or something to that effect. Yet everyone I've heard talking about it treats it like it's a big mystery.
 

drakkon

alt_historian said:
Also, is it me, or was it made pretty clear (in the film) what had happened? That is, a nuclear war. Viggo Mortenson's character talks, in voiceover, about "a bright flash, the ground shook, and everything electrical went dead", or something to that effect. Yet everyone I've heard talking about it treats it like it's a big mystery.
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I thought it sounded more like a Meteor strike myself, but Nuclear war is entirely plausable. The Author left it ambiguous deliberately.

If you read the reviews of both book and film, the reviewers often project thier own fears and/or agendas. Enviormentalists assume it was and Ecological collapse. Anti-War types assume it was nuclear war.

One guy, my brother's neighbor, claimed it was "obviously all caused by Peak Oil".
 

alt_historian

drakkon said:
I thought it sounded more like a Meteor strike myself, but Nuclear war is entirely plausable. The Author left it ambiguous deliberately.

If you read the reviews of both book and film, the reviewers often project thier own fears and/or agendas. Enviormentalists assume it was and Ecological collapse. Anti-War types assume it was nuclear war.

One guy, my brother's neighbor, claimed it was "obviously all caused by Peak Oil".
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Well, I assumed it was an ecological collapse caused by nuclear war... which makes me an anti-war environmentalist, I suppose. Which I am, just not to any great extent.

Anyway...
 

mdc_1957

Just curious, though. Is there any semblance of civil order remaining in The Road's US? It appears as though everything is indeed about to die.
 

drakkon

mdc_1957 said:
Just curious, though. Is there any semblance of civil order remaining in The Road's US? It appears as though everything is indeed about to die.
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No, If any semblance of civil order remains, we don't see it. Just gangs of canibals and small numbers of other survivors, who seem to spend much of their time fleeing and hiding from said canibals.
 
Petike

Petike

I hate to necro this thread, but I do not want to start another like it, so bear with me.

One AH novel that always struck me as pretty bleak was Jacek Dukaj's Xavras Wyżryn (Uchronia.net entry). It's not on the FAT level of "the world has gone completely mad", but Europe is still in a cut-up and unenviable position in the 1990s and totalitarianism is generally more powerful than in OTL. :( The divergence of the book is a crushing Soviet victory in an alternate Polish-Soviet War.
 
Abhakhazia

Abhakhazia

Banned
The CSA mockumentary was terribly morbid.

They treated black slaves as animals.
They had imperialist wars across the war.
They promised to support the Nazis.
A President considered "Chancellor Hitler" a "close family friend."

How could you get any worse?
 

d32123

Banned
I remember reading the description of an alternate history book on wikipedia about a Nazi America where non-Aryans are raised on farms and have their vocal cords cut out at birth. Also, gladiator battles between them in Madison Square Garden. Can't remember the name, though.

EDIT: I remember the name now. It was called "The Final Solution".
 
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Mr.J

I agree with most of these, but for me Two Dooms was too contrived with its POD and blatantly polemical (we had to nuke those Jap bastards or they'd bring the Orient to America!!!111!!) to be really affecting. Kornbluth was an interesting writer, but IMO he was much better when Pohl was around to moderate him - The Space Merchants, now that's an affecting dystopia along with being utterly hilarious.
 
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